Commons talk:Picture of the Year/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Dumps

Dear Wiki Commons,

For a long time we have been able to download database dumps of wikipedia for offline use: http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/

And we are now reaching the point where there are some very good reader programs for these dumps: KDEApps Wikipedia Dump Reader - http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Wikipedia+Dump+Reader?content=65244&PHPSESSID=172a310040094b74325d14df367512e6 WikiTaxi - http://wikitaxi.org/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index

However, since 2007 you have removed the accompanying image dump, itself very out of date, due to the impossible size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Currently_Wikipedia_does_not_allow_or_provide_facilities_to_download_all_Images

What is provided on the other hand is a dump file of your WikiCommons - Pictures of the Years: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2007

Is there anyway of providing this image dump in a way that images to be found in wikipedia are tagged as such, so that a program like WikiTaxi that already has an imported article dump, could use the image dump to reconstitute articles in their original online form, with pictures?

I don't know if this has merit as a technical solution, but i should be delighted if it could be done easily.

Best regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.85.197.85 (talk • contribs) 17:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

POTY

I think that POTY is just too many clicks away from the main page. It can only be reached by people who know about it. A pity for one of the most relevant activities of this project. --84.15.44.154 08:27, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

An official committee mailing list

I'm proposing an official committee mailing list, instead of using an unofficial mailing list (such as google groups) for each year's POTY. Thoughts? — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 16:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, good idea. Have preparations for POTY 2009 started already? -- Jovan Cormac 12:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so, but we might as well start now :). — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 12:47, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Right you are, let's move to Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009. -- Jovan Cormac 12:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Great! I'll try to help around with the organising when I can (we're getting a bit off-topic here, heh :)). Should we put a notice on VP, AN, FPC talk page, QI talk page, and similar pages for wider attention? — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 14:08, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean you don't have a centralized system for wider attention? Better talk to me about that. :P Yes, the word should be spread. (I also agree that the contest should be on an official mailing list, for the sake of transparency). Harej (talk) 08:17, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we should. Btw. the preparatory action has moved to Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2009/Preparation. What about the mailing list, though? Which service should we use to set one up? -- Jovan Cormac 08:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

WMF already got a host name we could use, if we have consensus for it (for example, namehere@lists.wikimedia.org). Though, it's not created yet. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 08:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Great. Who do we have to talk to to get the list set up there? -- Jovan Cormac 08:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

We have to create a bugzilla report and CC it to Cary Bass. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 09:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What is it that can't be done onwiki?Geni (talk) 10:20, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Same question, it'd be easier, wouldn't it? →Diti the penguin — 11:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you are probably right (both of you). We just need to pay attention that the discussion pages don't get too cluttered, or flooded with off-topic conversations. -- Jovan Cormac 11:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Plus, it would be better to have an official mailing list, rather than using an unofficial mailing list for transparency. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 11:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

What was it that was done on mailing lists last year (examples with details changed to protect privacy if need be)??? Thanks ++Lar: t/c 21:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we would need some input from the former committee members to clarify that. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 12:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

What about making the list archives public? I don't see why this should be private (at the time), but a mailing list should be created, IMO. — Kanonkas // talk // e-mail // 19:50, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

links

Link for downloading the archive are not longer working?? please fix this!! Thabet (talk) 10:29, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Still not working :( --85.181.4.132 16:24, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Simply no-one created downloadable version. Volunteers are welcomed. --Jklamo (talk) 19:01, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It appears as if downloadable versions used to exist, and have since been removed due to the decommissioning of the hosting server? --118.208.57.138 11:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Has stable.ts.wikimedia.org been removed or just move to some other domain? -- Michael F. Schönitzer 14:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Found & Fixed the link [1] but there are only the files for 2006 & 2007 -- Michael F. Schönitzer 15:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

the .zip files are both 404, so that's pretty useless too. :( --118.208.17.91 14:21, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Voting date

I'm not sure whether it is okay to vote. The preparation page says the voting started, but the voting page states otherwise. When will the voting begin\did it already begin? Tomer T (talk) 06:37, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I got banner message last week I think its over.. Gnan garra 13:08, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I meant voting in the final round. Tomer T (talk) 13:59, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

headline "PICTURE of the year"

You show more PHOTOS and I mean it better you write in the headline"PHOTO of the year" because is different to a PICTURE!--RvB (talk) 08:47, 29 November 2011 (UTC)reni von bifamo

Perhaps photos have an advantage in the process, but there are non-photos among the finalists from 2010 (File:Frontal lobe animation.gif and File:Buddhabrot-W1000000-B100000-L20000-2000.jpg) and quite a few in 2009, so "picture" is more appropriate. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 05:55, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Pages take for ever to load and no place to get help.

Hi, I'm not willing to wait several minutes while the javascript thing whirls and nothing happens. I can't "log in" or "register" since I can never get the "captcha" right. Whole thing is too much trouble. Where can I get some help and questions answered? MathewTownsend (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I give up.

I am getting so pissed off right now I am mad I even came here. Last year I couldn't vote because, even when I signed in, it told me I was "not registered", and now this year, I'm clearly signed in, but the "vote" button that I can see is grayed out. I don't have script protections on, all I know is this should be a brainless as taking a piss, and if I can't do it, someone else can't do it too, and that means someone in the tech department isn't thinking about the average user out there. Yeah, yeah, I know that thousands of Wikipedians will have no problems with this, and hundreds of others will have problems but will eventually figure out how to do it, but I'm also quite positive that there are dozens of Wikipedians like me who want to just say, shove this where the sun doesn't shine, I've had it. I can't believe I was stupid enough to try this again this year. HuskyHuskie (talk) 05:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Please visit this side: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login --Alchemist-hp (talk) 05:44, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I remembered that wrong. I wasn't allowed to vote last year because I didn't meet the "edit threshold"[2] (something like 1000 edits?) even though I had in excess of 5000 edits. I may have gotten the history wrong, but I did correctly remember that someone holding the technical reins on this thing probably has only one hand on his keyboard. I'm sorry to be rude, but this is absolutely asinine. HuskyHuskie (talk) 05:47, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Did you know...

...that there are 13 subject categories at 2011's Picture of the Year competition? (And four that refer to specific formats.)
...that twelve of the 32 current top-ranking POTY candidates are either outdoor views of nature (7) or constructions (5), while a further 3 are nature views with a vehicle or animal as a minor feature?
...that there are no cluse-up pictures among nature views?
...that except for the 32 top-ranked media overall, only the top one of each category will be included in round 2?

I will cross-post this, as it's not clear to me which one of these many talk pages actually gets read. Certainly, the rate of replies could be higher.

Samsara (talk) 12:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Final round

Why this picture (112 votes) has not been elected for the final round while this one (111 votes) has been elected? --SteGrifo27 (tell me) 07:52, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Because of rules. Balloon was 8th in its category and not among top 32, Mona Lisa was 1st in its category.--Jklamo (talk) 11:45, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Voting for pic above buttons or below?

Please see my comment at "Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2011/Finalists#Voting for pic above buttons or below?". The way the voting page is rendered in Firefox 10, at least, makes it not so obvious which image the buttons refer to. - dcljr (talk) 14:32, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Commons:Picture of the Decade

I am open to ideas. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 23:11, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

"We have a finalist now!"

"We have a finalist now!" it says on the front page of the competition. Does this mean an overall winner? It's not entirely clear. Rd232 (talk) 13:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Marking candidates

I was wondering if I should mark candidates. It may look redundant but this way we can quickly generate a candidate list for 2012 effortlessly through template magic and the page would be updated automatically with each promotion. I can do this through bot. This would also denote the year of promotion of the featured content. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 23:04, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Also I can include the "POTY Categories" into the template as well. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 23:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Edits would look like this. I made one edit with bot to provide a sample. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 18:46, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me - but I think we need to include the POTY category in the template as well. Rd232 (talk) 22:47, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Should I apply "candidate" changes to all former candidates with a bot? I have the code ready for this task.

Category code can be done, the issue is displaying it. If it will be displayed as text it needs to be translated. Category structure should be agreed upon as well. If it will be symbols then we need to decide how to symbolize.

I revised the existing category structure a little (moved stuff around) and have boldly created Category:Pictures of the Year (by year) and Category:Pictures of the Year (galleries). I have however no idea what to do with categories such as Category:POTY 2011, Category:POTY 2010 and their content. I have placed them as a subcategory but they perhaps should be handled differently. I am not sure how though.

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 02:07, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, as far as I'm concerned you can go ahead with the bot (assuming by "former candidates" you mean candidates from previous years...) - except that we don't want to end up doing a second run for POTY category additions to the template, so best figure that out first. The by year / galleries categories look good. Category:POTY 2011 etc looks to me like the top level category for each year of the contest. Rd232 (talk) 05:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

As for the category code: well it needs to be text, really. Isn't this already translated? Is the category structure stable from year to year? It would be harder to deal with a category structure that changes from year to year, but I suppose it can be done. Rd232 (talk) 05:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Yup, I am using galleries (R1) as input and will mark them if they are not already marked as finalist, first place, etc. I am going to run the code now.

Just displaying the category can be done but don't we want to display something also? Something like the POTY star but different.

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 05:32, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I am not convinced it is a good idea to mark picture of the year candidates, the assessments template is doing to many different things already. But if it is done it should be placed after Featured Picture in the assessments box, since being picture of the year candidate is just a side effect of being a featured picture. /Ö 08:02, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The code for this had been in the assessment template since 2006. Files from POTY 2006 and POTY 2007 were marked since the beginning. So this isn't a new feature, just an underused feature. I have marked POTY candidates for 2009 and 2010 yesterday so only POTY 2008 (501 files of which 132 already marked prior) and 2011 (601 files of which 37 are already marked prior) remains to be marked. I am holding off on marking the other two years since there is no emergency to mark them.

Sure, I can adjust the ordering but also candidate text may be removed entirely. I am not sure removal of text is a good idea even though I do see the point of redundancy. I just do not see any harm pointing out that a file was considered for POTY but did not make it as a finalist. This can also point people unaware of POTY towards it which would perhaps increase participation. A short term site notice may be ignored. Perhaps only the logo (

) can be displayed without text to back it up.

The main issue (to me) is marking files that went through POTY even if the marking is hidden from the reader. That way we can for example determine all the Featured promotions in 2012 for next POTY or have a category for any older POTY. I feel we are too reliant on toolserver queries which can be naively handled. Toolserver can become unavailable after all (I remember the replag issues from the past).

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 18:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The Assessment template didnt exist until 2008 so it can not have contained code in 2006.

I think the 2006 and 2007 poty candidates were marked by a bot without consensus before any decision was reached in discussions. Then the bot owner disappeared when he was asked to revert those changes. So that is not a reason to mark more images now, especially by bot before a consensus is reached. /Ö 18:56, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

There was no consensus against it back then I believe though I could be wrong. Discussions years ago probably aren't very relevant today.

I can revert all candidate markings right away. I can make the template ignore the parameter info as well without removing the markings rendering them useless. Question is, are candidate markings a harm to commons or POTY.

Like I said, I am not marking any more since there is no emergency.

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 19:40, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to do something about the redundant text and info it gives for the pure candidates. The extra line of text is not needed, the hidden cat is OK for me. I am inclined to say you should get rid of the (

) logo as well (for pure candidates), unless it made it to the finals, came 3rd, 2nd, 1st. The user browsing the pages already have a lot of other logos (FP/QI/VI) to relate to already. Let us try not to confuse the users too much. --Slaunger (talk) 20:06, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The thing about not marking it at all is users off commons (say on en.wikipedia) will get no hint on the category. I want to leave some evidence such as the logo as I feel POTY should be advertised year-long. I am open to alternatives though. This isn't vital of course but I think it would be nice. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 21:22, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Picture of the Year structure is a mess

I have been going through the POTY pages and it is quite messy. There are far too many <includeonly> categories that transclude to places they shouldn't, too many pages protected for no good reason and overall these pages should be updated to meet some sort of a standard. Particularly earlier years need the most work. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 18:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right, but if you gave some examples it might be easier to know where to start. I'd focus on creating a better structure for the future, and go from there (earlier years fixing is lower priority and can be done later) - but we need to clarify exactly what needs improving. Rd232 (talk) 22:50, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure. I just want everything to flawlessly function. :) These two low priority issues may be worthwhile to keep in mind:

More immediate problem is the use of POTY in category names and sub-page names. A lot of pages are protected as well (for no good reason), making them editable.

Also <includeonly>'s make it very difficult to update categories since bots cannot figure out where the categories supposed to be. It takes me 10-15 minutes to find a single one on occasions. You can see this problem in Commons:Picture of the Year itself as it is categorized under POTY 2010.

I cannot give examples without going through past POTY pages so consider the number of sub pages:

Smart use of parser functions and reusing the same code each year would greatly improve how POTY is run each year. I can design/redesign all these pages so that they have a master style that can be modified/updated but everything would remain uniform.

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 00:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

For starters the main page Commons:Picture of the Year should become a translatable template. It semi-achieves this and falls flat on some years. Ideally we should reuse the same templates each year. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 01:24, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely that would be ideal. Of course, we should allow some years to diverge if their content is actually substantially different. But if POTY 2012 is going to be very similar to POTY 2011, I don't see why we need a new set of templates. We can have a master POTY template structure, maybe, that switches depending on the year, so exceptions can be made if necessary. Rd232 (talk) 07:22, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is what I meant with smart use of parser functions. :) POTY 2011 has more pages than POTY 2007 naturally. So the master template would be designed to handle POTY 2011 hiding pages that are not used back in 2007 instead of showing redlinks. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 11:41, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Marking POTY candidates through Assessments template

{{Assessments}}

I'd like to mark featured pictures that were considered under POTY. While the general principle of POTY ~ FPs of that year works for the most part, the first POTY included two years (2005, 2006). So the rule does not always work. Such a change would provide some advantages.

By process of elimination knowing which files were POTY candidates before, we can automatically generate candidates for the next POTY. This would eliminate the need for using toolserver for this task.
This input can be used to generate categories so that all POTY participant files are sorted by year.
This would allow various checks such as checking if a POTY file was demoted from being FP. To my knowledge this has never happened but such a check would be possible for all POTY candidates so that we can update the relevant vote page if necessary.

As for the template. The code can operate without displaying the user any output. However, I would prefer displaying the candidate status of the files even though this is quite redundant given all FPs of that year are automatically candidates. This would advertise POTY which did not have the level of participation we would have wished. A lot of wikimedians are still unaware of the existence of POTY and a 2-3 week sitenotice notification IMHO isn't enough. Many wikis have FPs after all, none has POTY.

-- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 16:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

No visible output please, just categories. It's redundant and clutters the template. Advertising should be done elsewhere. --99of9 (talk) 04:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

It is a single line. It can be merged into the "this is a featured picture" line so that wording mentions both. Currently instead of text the template displays a redundant empty line. No one has complained about this for over a month. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 04:11, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I do not see any need of this at all. We have Commons:Featured pictures/chronological maintained by FPCBot already, meaning that that there is no ambiguity in figuring out which FP was promoted each year. And there is absolutely no reason to clutter the {{Assessments}} template output with another line with this information. --Slaunger (talk) 07:25, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I explained this on your talk page. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 06:50, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I support:

A hidden by-year-category, if a bot is ensuring the file description pages are up-to-date.
- It is easier to fetch category members automatically (it is also possible to fetch images that are on a given page but people tend to "work with galleries" meaning adding icons and such stuff which is good and intended but will have bad impacts on the machine-readability)
- The bot (operator) must ensure no one is able to hijack the category by removing the template or its params, or by adding the template or wrong parameters while the picture is not featured.
Adding a fixed link to {{Assessments}} pointing to the nomination page.
- Otherwise, when a file is moved after the bot tagged the file, the link points into Nirvana.
Adding a "topic parameter" given by the one who closed the candidature (This image will be added to the fpc category: Places/Panoramas) which also should not change the appearance of the template.
- This will allow easier fetching of information for POTY (and other tasks)

I do not support:

Visible changes in the output in the template.

-- Rillke^(q?) 16:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I generally support, but isn't it better to propose this on Template talk:Assessments?.--miya (talk) 06:27, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Wall calendars

Just wanted to let you know that I've made up two wall calendars using selections from the POTY finalists. One of them, File:Best of Commons 2013.pdf, contains selections from the top three places from each year. The other, File:Best of Commons Animals 2013.pdf, contains pictures of animals that were finalists. Let me know what you think! Antony-22 (talk) 22:46, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Animation in banner

I've asked for the animation to be removed from the POTY central notice at COM:AN. Please consider joining the discussion there. wctaiwan (talk) 06:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Change during voting period

I must strongly object to the current state of this page. I came here to see the previous years' winners, and I find that I cannot because someone is trying to be "helpful" (I suppose) by removing most of the information from the page, and leaving only last years' winner with a prominent link to this years' intro page. Thanks, but I'd rather be given the option to go vote or not. Forcing users in one direction like this is not helpful, it's annoying. - dcljr (talk) 12:46, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I too came here to see the previous years' winners.KhabarNegar (talk) 21:17, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

How to search by size?

I'm looking for a desktop background that exactly fits my desktop size -- is it possible to search through the finalists by size? They're all beautiful, and I've found some that I like, but I have black bars around bits (or it's stretched or pieces are clipped). Banaticus (talk) 00:55, 31 May 2013 (UTC)``

I am afraid it is not possible. But you can check Category:Commons featured desktop backgrounds (or Category:Commons featured widescreen desktop backgrounds). --Jklamo (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

You can request a database query. --Dschwen (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

There? -- Rillke^(q?) 17:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Unable to vote

I tried to vote for 2013. Though I'm eligible (fulfill all the requirements), but still got an error message. Why?--Kalaiarasy (talk) 10:29, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I guess some error message talking about the title-blacklist? This should be gone now. I forgot to unprotect the pages where your votes are saved, yesterday. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:27, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Religious Buildings

I think the category Religious Buildings is superfluous. These pictures could easily be inserted into other categories. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 21:39, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jan Arkesteijn: Some people prefer smaller and more specific galleries. This is something we should evaluate in the future. —Mono 23:48, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Slovak in English galleries

Someone messed up, and I (as an English user) am seeing the Slovak phrase "Hrady, zámky a pevnosti" instead of the English "Castles and Fortifications" on both Commons:Picture of the Year/2013/Galleries and Commons:Picture of the Year/2013/R1/Gallery/Castles. I can't even begin to figure out where this text is coming from. - dcljr (talk) 06:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah. It was because of this. I purged the cache on the relevant pages, and it seems to be fixed. - dcljr (talk) 06:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Paintings

Your "Paintings" section contains a mixture of Paintings, ukiyo-e, engravings, and lithographs. None of these are equivalent to each other. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:55, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Downloading Archives of POTY

Is it possible to batch download pictures of the year? There is a comment here from 2008, but nothing else I can find. SabreWolfy (talk) 09:10, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

2014 gallery broken

Something got wrong in the 2014 gallery: Lua error in Module:POTY/parser at line 14: bad argument #2 to 'format' (string expected, got nil). --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:13, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Fixed with Special:Diff/191403517. The 2014 /candidates page contains comments in the caption. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:07, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Rillke^(q?) 14:07, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

emilien le brazidec

Bonjour emilien il ème de pa et impro et ime Emilien le Brazidec (talk) 16:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

POTY 2016

A 2016 edition has not been organised. What happenned? ChoMigg (talk) 22:13, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Category "castles and fortifications"

This wording is bothering me big time. It's incorrect. A lot of the candidates this and previous years feature neither castles nor fortifications. A castle, in the historical sense, is two things: fortified, and a private residence. The simplest castle would be a free-standing home with thick walls, reinforced door, and little windows hard to shoot into but easy to shoot out of--a keep. Larger castles would have heavily walled yards, gatehouses, moats, and so on. Later on a lot of mansions and palaces were built by rich people who had no need to defend their person and property, but who liked the prestige and aesthetics of castle architecture. Since such homes are intended to be covered by this category, shall we rename the category to be more descriptive? Maybe something like "Mansions, palaces, and fortifications", the latter standing for all large scale defensive architecture like city walls, keeps, military fortresses, citadels, etc. --Pitke (talk) 11:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

@Pitke: I might be responsible for this... I merged Palaces into a proposed "Castles, Palaces and Fortifications" category when categorizing 2016-A before passing that off to the 2016 POTY committee... the reasoning is that it can be very difficult to differentiate between a castle and a palace (and where would a château go?) from just a photo, and we would ideally like to have at least a similar number of photos in each POTY category because of the rule that each category gets at least two photos into Round 2. It's possible that the title then got shortened (I was unable to devote the time to be part of the committee last year or this year). It's worth keeping in mind that categorizing for POTY can be fiendishly difficult and you're never going to get a perfect set of categories. Indeed, categorization is the main reason that POTY starts as late as it does. Now that POTY2017 has started, I don't think changing the categories would be wise... Not speaking for them, but I'm sure the 2018 committee would be extremely grateful for any help you could give next year! Storkk (talk) 10:11, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Some chateaus (like Chantilly) are palaces, some are castles (like Caen). If a future category encompassed both palaces and castles ("Pre-modern architecture" maybe?) there'd be no need to differentiate anyway. And it's really not all that hard to tell the difference once you know a few principles. In any case, I'm hoping future POTYs can benefit from better categories, this year's is already running so that shouldn't be messed with. --Pitke (talk) 10:52, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

If you can correctly categorize photos of buildings at a glance, helping the POTY committee next year with categorization will save an enormous amount of time. Mandating those helping categorization do research on the subject of each photo is not going to help run a timely contest. Storkk (talk) 12:22, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Common picture of the year

Who are the winners of Common picture of the year 2018 competition? Hooriscool (talk) 16:49, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

@Hooriscool: POTY2018 has not started yet. Most likely it will start in May 2019. --jdx ^Re: 17:27, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

May 2019... **facepalm** --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 22:33, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

POTY date

There should be a annually fixed date of POTY. It is very confusing, that some years the contest start in April/May, but there has been years with start in June or in February (like POTY 2018). I support an idea, that POTY should be held every year approximately in the same period of the year (probably April/May). Maybe it has been discussed in some other talk... Regards — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 15:08, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point. We just have to make sure everything is ready by the time it's scheduled, which hopefully won't be too hard (you're welcome to help). Participation in the R1 has been better than last two R1s, so maybe starting it earlier has a benefit? And I do think we will get less ineligible voters, but I haven't done the statistics yet. Maybe we should schedule it after steward elections (February of each year), so like POTY March/April each year, or maybe check if we clash with any other events? Or, is clashing good or bad? @Christian Ferrer, -revi, Steinsplitter, and Moheen: any opinions? --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:29, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed with @Zhuyifei1999: . In general, we have international events like WLE in May and WLM in September, especially on Commons. In outside on Wikipedia, there are WAM in October-November and Wikipedia Day in January. Where many large Wiki celebrates several events to celebrate it. So its fine to schedule between March and April, IMO. ~Moheen ^{(keep talking)} 17:33, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

All dates are fine for me, anyway my help is limited as the only thing I can do is to try sorting the images. Otherwise I do not have the technical knowledge to start the contest. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 11:46, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

2020

Do you have plans for the 2020 competition? 4nn1l2 (talk) 02:04, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

@4nn1l2: 2020? 2019 has not started yet. --jdx ^Re: 03:18, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I meant the competition held in 2020 which would select the best picture of the previous year (i.e., 2019). Now, I understand that Commons:Picture of the Year/2019 has already been created. Thanks anyway. 4nn1l2 (talk) 03:31, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Scheduling

Just curious: why does POTY typically run in March + April? I would think that for pictures from 2020, it would start a little earlier in the year? Not a big deal -- just wondering. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 17:56, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I have raised similar question two years ago. POTY should have fixed (±) date over years, imo. — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 10:46, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Copyright infringement

Many of the entries on the Picture of the Year are photos of paintings, maps and other privately owned images. Also many of the photos are greatly enhanced using photo editing software. I thought this was a contest for real people to take real photos. JaspersamsoN22 (talk) 01:16, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not exclusively a photography contest. Photographs and scans of existing works on paper and even computer-generated imagery can be nominated for Featured Picture, which is the basis for this yearly event. But your heading says "copyright infringement" -- which images are copyright infringement? All photos and the subjects of those photos should be either old enough to be out of copyright, published with a free license, or subject to an exemption like freedom of panorama. Whether or not the objects themselves are privately owned doesn't factor into it. There is a solution, however, if you don't want the paintings, etc. to win: don't vote for them. :) — Rhododendrites ^talk | 01:25, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

POTY 2021

Hello, when will be scheduled POTY 2021 R1, please? Thank you! 37.171.233.83 08:34, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

POTY 2021 will happen (hopefully!) at some point in the next few months - specific dates have yet to be nailed down :) firefly ( t · c ) 11:33, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Has picture of the year been cancelled?

There was no POTY in 2021, why is this?--Aalaa324 (talk) 21:55, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

There will be a POTY for 2021, but it usually happens later in the year. It takes a lot of work to gather and organized the pictures and voting. They are always looking for volunteers if you are interested in helping. Glennfcowan (talk) 03:24, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

If one were interested in helping, how would one get in touch with Them? Eve Teschlemacher (talk) 07:04, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

You can message the members from last year's committee. I believe that @Firefly may be taking the lead this year again, but @Moheen and @W.carter can also help get you. Just make a comment on their user talk page. Also, there is an IRC channel mentioned here [3] that might be helpful as well. I don't use IRC so I don't know much about it. Glennfcowan (talk) 03:53, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not available for working with POTY this time. --Cart (talk) 08:38, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Picture of the Year 2021

It is May already and still nothing about Picture of the Year 2021. Some thoughts? (just to push the things a bit).--MrPanyGoff 12:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Picture of the year 2020 looks like it happened in fall 2021 so it could be a while if it's going to be on the same sort of schedule DogsRNice (talk) 04:54, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Making for less aggressive archiving

There's nothing on this page, which makes it look rather barren and the project moribund. So, I've changed the auto-archiving settings. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I've extended it further to a year, and have unarchived a few still-relevant discussions. -M.nelson (talk) 12:18, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Notice of discussion about naming this contest

Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Change_the_name_of_POTY_from_"POTY_[year_the_photos_were_promoted_to_FP]"_to_"POTY_[current_year]" — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:16, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

POTY 2021 will not be held?

This thing is officially dead, right? Kruusamägi (talk) 08:28, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Bilderauswahl

Moved from Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2021/de

Wer zeichnet sich eigentlich verantwortlich für die Bilderauswahl für die Picture of the year-Wahl? Wurden eigentlich alle hochgeladenen Bilder durchgeforstet um eine gerechte Wahl durchführen zu lassen? Viele User (wie ich) lassen ihre Bilder erst gar nicht prämieren, weil das eine zusätzliche Arbeit bedeutet sie für Exzellente Bilder, Qualitätsbildern oder Wertvollen Bildern zu nominieren. Und mindestens 33 % meiner Bilder der letzten 2-3 Jahre gehören in diese Kategorien. Wenn ihr eine gerechte Wahl haben wollt, müsst ihr einfach auch nicht als Exzellente- oder Qualitätsbilder nominierte Dateien durchforsten. Herzliche und nicht der Wahl zugeneigte Grüße Ricardalovesmonuments (talk) 19:57, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

@Ricardalovesmonuments: Any picture that received featured picture status in 2021 is eligible for the Picture of the Year contest. I do not know if people are patrolling all uploads for potentially good images. If you think an image should be considered, you can nominate it for featured picture, and if it passes, it'll be considered in the next Picture of the Year voting. Legoktm (talk) 08:07, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Ricardalovesmonuments: Vielleicht ist es nicht gerecht, dass nur exzellente Bilder fürs Bild des Jahres nominiert werden, aber auch exzellente Bilder gab es 2021 über eintausend, kaum jemand kann so viele Bilder durchgehen. Deshalb gibt es Kategorien, aber wenn alle im Jahr hochgeladene Bilder teilnehmen würden, würden diese Kategorien auch nicht helfen, denn es wurden 2021 – wenn meine Anfrage richtig ist – über 12 Millionen Bilder hochgeladen. Außerdem gibt es bestimmt viele gute Bilder, die nie ausgezeichnet werden, doch ist wahrscheinlich die bedeutende Mehrheit höchstens mittelmäßig. Unübersichtlich viele Bilder, von den die Mehrheit gar nicht gut ist – da hat man noch weniger Lust als jetzt abzustimmen. – Tacsipacsi (talk) 19:12, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

POTY 2021 voting underway

See Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2021. Voting is from 14 to 28 November. Dhtwiki (talk) 08:53, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Delisted FP

Commons:Featured picture candidates/removal/File:Ensifera ensifera (22271195865).jpg was delisted as an FP, yet is a candidate for POTY. Storkk (talk) 10:48, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. I had forgotten about that exchange. In that delisting discussion it came up that several of the author's photos may be too heavily manipulated for FP. It is surprising then that some of the participants in that delisting discussion supported Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:En Garde (21310837273).jpg, which of course is the same bird by the same photographer taken two days apart. I don't see any obvious evidence of masking there, to be clear, and I wasn't even completely convinced about anything other than that a mask was imperfectly applied (for whatever reason) in the other case, but it seems like the participants there didn't realize it was by the same person. Courtesy ping to Charlesjsharp and Poco a poco, as names I recognize from commenting on both. Regardless, we should of course remove the non-FP. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:46, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I can't see any clear masking on the other image Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:En Garde (21310837273).jpg. So - benefit of the doubt? Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:29, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I think that procedurally, an image would first need to be de-listed as an FP before it could be disqualified from POTY (unless the POTY committee feel differently), so I think this should only focus on File:Ensifera ensifera (22271195865).jpg, and any others that I may not have noticed. I also feel that any disqualifications should really happen during round 1 when voters can vote for any number of images, just for fairness of round 2. Storkk (talk) 15:36, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

an image would first need to be de-listed as an FP before it could be disqualified from POTY Oh of course, yes. And I certainly wouldn't be a good person to do that, since I have photos in the same category (not that any of them are likely finalists, but optics, etc.). Just flagging it in case those who objected to the other image had reason to initiate that process. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 17:24, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I've removed that image from voting. For the other image, I agree with Storkk that any disqualifications should be abundantly obvious or after the delisting process. And yes, it would be much better if they happened in round 1 rather than round 2 (though of course if something egregious comes up, we'll disqualify in round 2 if we have to). Legoktm (talk) 15:59, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

And I ran a query to check for more delisted FPs and didn't find anything else. Legoktm (talk) 16:06, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Ready to go

The CentralNotice banner is set to go and I've already opened up voting, feel free to start voting as part of the beta test period (they will count like normal) and ping me if you hit any errors! Legoktm (talk) 02:32, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Vote tampering prevention?

i'm curious. what's in place to prevent changing or removal of another user's vote? RZuo (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

There is an abusefilter rule in place. And we are manually spot checking the vote pages. Legoktm (talk) 16:13, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Problem with POTY

Hello, — Preceding unsigned comment added by LéoFatal (talk • contribs) 05:23, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I noticed the POTY was marked for 2022. Is that a mistake?

— LéoFatal ^{• Discuter •} 05:22, 17 April 2023 (UTC) LéoFatal (talk) 05:22, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@LéoFatal: We are voting on all the photos that were promoted to featured status in 2022 to determine which is the best. POTY tends to appear "one year behind" in that regard. Legoktm (talk) 16:15, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

TELL PEOPLE

What's going on here? POTY is not mentioned on the home page and it's not mentioned on the FP page. Please someone, do something about this asap. Charlesjsharp (talk) 13:55, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Last year you said, "Regulars at Commons don't go the home page" and now you're complaining that it's not there. Like I said last year, there is a sitewide banner running across all Wikimedia wikis, including Commons, advertising the contest. If you're not seeing that, maybe you have CentralNotice banners disabled in your preferences?

There's also going to be a MassMessage sent to all the 2021 voters who haven't voted yet in the next few days. Legoktm (talk) 15:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I did complain about the process last year and you've taken no notice. Do you want me to complain every year? I realise that you are, like all of us, a volunteer, but it would be really helpful if you listened and don't just do your own thing.

The banner shows up here but not on Commons. I've put a mention on FPC, QIC and VIC pages which is what you should have done Legoktm. Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure why it wouldn't show up on Commons. It's set to appear on all projects. Commons isn't an exception, so I wonder if it's something in your preferences (mine, too -- I don't think I've seen the banner on Commons for some reason, either). — Rhododendrites ^talk | 15:40, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I added yesterday the POTY to the main page, as we always did. I believe that being only once per year and the voting contest for the best pictures in the project and with the most voters it does deserve it. Poco a poco (talk) 05:36, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Two-ish changes going into 2022

I've made two hopefully minor changes going into the 2022 contest (tentatively starting in April). I am trying to simplify the process of setting up each year's contest, and one of those things is reducing the number of year-specific pages that need to be created every time (and copy over all the translations, etc.).

To that end I have created a year-agnostic page for the rules and the Committee itself (describing it as a "standing committee"). The rules have not really changed in years, so I don't see any issue with having them be more static. Note that I did make one small change to the wording of how images are disqualified to reflect the practice that happened last year.

I think we can just have one Committee page, and if people want to join for just a year and then step down they can still do so. But I hope this helps us keep momentum going during the period we aren't running the contest and doesn't leave us feeling that we're starting from scratch every year. Pinging all the other 2021 committee members since y'all technically only signed up for the 2021 contest and I don't want to commit you to something you're not up for: @Firefly, @Rhododendrites, @AntiCompositeNumber.

Please let me know if there are any concerns with this.

P.S. I'm tracking the ongoing simplification work here. Legoktm (talk) 04:55, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Congratulations for handling the organization of the contest early enough to try to launch it during the first semester of the year! -- Basile Morin (talk) 02:26, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 applause to this year's organisers for making it happen early.--RZuo (talk) 13:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for being late, but I would like to support the applause, too. Thank you very much for all your work with POTY! --Aristeas (talk) 11:54, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Category adjustments

We still need to finish sorting the remaining photos, but based on the current category sizes, we already have two obvious candidates for splitting: Birds and People and human activities. And we might be close enough to split something out of Objects, shells and miscellaneous.

Just eyeballing it, I think we could split a "Sports and athletics" category out of People. I'm not a bird person so maybe there's a better way to split the category (e.g. geography or some bird classification), but we could do stationary birds vs birds in motion?

Legoktm (talk) 00:36, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

A suppose one consideration is how much it matters if divisions create categories that are effectively galleries of one person's or two people's uploads, but I suppose that's sometimes the case already. I was thinking about it because dividing birds by geography is going to wind up with categories populated primarily by one or two people. The cleanest way to divide birds is probably taxonomically, though. Passerines ("perching birds") account for about half of all species, and I suspect they account for roughly half of FPCs.

People: There were a lot sports, and a lot of "historical" photos in the people category. Also conceivably could separate "portraits" (defined as someone posing for a photograph), which might be a pretty good split, too.

Objects: There are a lot of buildings, architectural details, ceilings, and other things that just need to be recategorized in there. Not sure a split is needed?

Plants/fungi: This one is harder. Geography may also make sense, but our plant FPs are typically almost all European anyway. Not enough fungi to split this one. Unclear.

I suppose the first step for anything other than birds and people is to make sure everything is categorized properly, and then start making decisions? — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:09, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Additional questions/comments:

maps/diagrams is so small it should just be moved into works on paper
are shells animals or objects?
IMO panoramas are too squishy. there are a lot of photos in other categories that are panoramas, but aren't super wide. how wide is panorama? IMO it's too hard and should just be moved into other categories.
do aerial shots belong with satellite shots? — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:47, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
Agreed on maps. I would personally classify shells without an animal in them as an object, but if you can see the animal, then it's an animal?

My only concern with merging panoramas into other categories is if they would dominate those categories. But this is easily (dis)proven by looking at votes from previous years, I'll peek at the numbers.

Thematically I think aerial shots belong with satellite shots. From a photographer perspective, I would imagine getting someone to fly you up or rig a drone seems a lot harder than well, having a satellite that's already in space take a photo. (Not to overlook how much effort it takes to launch a satellite, etc. etc.) Legoktm (talk) 05:16, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

There was such a discussion on FPC three months ago, see Commons talk:Featured picture candidates/Archive 24#Commons photographers' results in Picture of the Year competition.

I only can repeat myself: "For me, there is an extreme imbalance in the topics in this competition. We have four categories for animals, a whopping nine categories for architecture, even bodies of water have their own category. But there is only one single category for people. So it's not surprising that once again not a single sports photo made it into the second round.And when I look at the nominations at FP, I sometimes have the impression that there are only landscapes, insects and church ceilings." Stepro (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, it does come up a couple times a year. What would you propose? Lego did point out that there may be enough sports to justify splitting out. That would be fine with me, too.

I think the fundamental question is whether we (a) create categories on a wide range of topics, hoping that the promise of representation motivates people to nominate photos that would go into those categories, and accepting that many of them might wind up very small while others bloat, or (b) try to create roughly even categories based on whatever photos happen to be nominated in a given year, merging/splitting/creating/removing as necessary. The latter is certainly the way we've been doing it, with categories that correspond to what happens to get promoted at FPC. The reason we have big categories for things like frescos, churches, and castles is because the subjects at FPC come from the people who most actively participate there. A look at this list makes it clear that this is an overwhelmingly European project (where there are a lot of frescos, churches, and castles). It also just depends on the individuals participating in a given year, because people have their niches. If both you and Grenada were active at the same time, we'd have quite a lot of sports FPs, I suspect. If Charles took a year off, our animal categories would shrink considerably.

Personally, I think there are good reasons to take either approach. We've been doing (b) for a number of years now; maybe it's time to give (a) a try? If there's consensus for that, we'd have to figure out what categories make sense, starting from scratch, right? Maybe it makes sense to use the traditional method (b) for the 2022 event, but to come up with the categories for the 2023 POTY now, with time to motivate people to nominate accordingly?

BTW: Here's another wild idea: include the winners of the past year's photo challenges among the POTY candidates. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 21:56, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I will briefly point out that compared to the 2020 and 2021 contests, we are running far ahead of schedule, so if we need to push back a few weeks while we get the categories straightened out, I'm all for that. Legoktm (talk) 23:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh I don't think I understood fully on the first read, IIUC, you're suggesting that we need to change next year's categories now, so people can take and nominate photos accordingly. I think that makes sense, the POTY categories should aim to both represent the pictures people are taking, but also incentivize people to take the photos we want to see. Legoktm (talk) 01:32, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The types of nominations at FPC will certainly not follow the potential categories of POTY, in my opinion. I don't see how these categories would influence future nominations. By setting quotas? It seems unrealistic to tell someone "stop your candidatures of animals, we have enough now this year!", for example.

Concerning the two largest categories (Birds and People), I agree with Rhododendrites' suggestions: Split the first one into Passerines / others, according to taxonomic considerations, and the second one into portraits / others -- Basile Morin (talk) 02:39, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The top two images in each category will automatically advance as finalists, regardless of overall vote count. So in theory, if you take photos in a more niche category, you have a better chance of advancing to the second round, and a better chance of winning POTY. As Rhododendrites mentioned earlier, this is already happening to some extent with some categories dominated by one or two photographers. No opinion on whether people would actually change their behavior based on new categories. Legoktm (talk) 05:02, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Sports ended up being 26 photos, which is on the smaller side but not too small IMO. We now have 102 pictures left in People. My rough counting is there's about 55-60 pictures that would be classified under "Portraits", more or less splitting the category in half. Any concerns? Legoktm (talk) 05:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The smallest categories at the moment are:

16 - Settlements
16 - Artificially illuminated outdoor spaces
17 - Sculptures
18 - Infrastructure
21 - Astronomy, satellite and outer space
21 - Waters
22 - Castles and fortifications
24 - Panoramic views

None of these are more than 1 standard deviation from the mean, but at least the two smallest are easily distributed to other categories (settlements are largely "nature views" + a few small "constructions and buildings" or simply >1 "constructions and buildings", and the illuminated outdoor spaces are various religious buildings and other buildings for the most part).

If remaining category, if people were split into portraits/other and birds split taxonomically, would be plants & fungi. Anyone have an idea of how to split that one? Or not worth it? — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:20, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

"settlements are largely "nature views"" - No. Definetly no. Both are Geography, but not "nature views". Human settlements are the complete contrary of "nature". Marcus Cyron (talk) 15:54, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I think my "+" was not clear. In the context of determining what to do with smaller categories (if anything at all, of course), it just seems that there are some photos in settlements that could be recategorized as "nature views" (nature, with some buildings that occupy just a small part of the frame) like this, and some photos in settlements that could be recategorized as "constructions and buildings" (because buildings are most prominent) like this one. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 16:27, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I would personally not consider File:Padum Zanskar View From Karsha Oct22 A7C 03984.jpg to be a "nature view" because nearly half of the photo is non-natural construction/farmland. I agree with your second example, that it would be appropriate under "construction and buildings". Legoktm (talk) 07:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree that splitting birds into Passeriformes and others makes sense. I'd suggest moving File:Vogelicoon.png (the current bird icon) to the Passeriformes and using something distinctive like

for the rest. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 22:56, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

+1 on the bird split. I spent a while thinking on how to split Plants & Fungi and couldn't come up with anything good, just "Fungi" alone is too small. I also thought about Flowers vs Other, but again, one ends up being too small. In previous POTYs they split large categories into multiple parts so it would be "Plants & Fungi 1" + "Plants & Fungi 2" (example). We could consider that, or probably get a similar effect by saying that for large categories, the 3rd and maybe 4th place photos will also advance as finalists.

I'm fine with leaving the other small categories as is, I don't think there's an obvious way to consolidate any of them. Legoktm (talk) 07:01, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I've split out Passeriformes based on the FP galleries, can you review and make sure nothing was missed? Legoktm (talk) 07:16, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Looks good to me. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Comment The committee Legoktm needs to find a better way of discussing these changes. I only just came across Rhododendrites post on FPC discussion dated 4 April. I don't patrol discussion pages and judging by the tiny number of contributors here, neither do many people. I suggest pinging successful 2022 FP nominators, or at least those with more than 5 FPs.

Separating out passerines is a random choice. Images of passerines are less likely to be interesting. Birds in flight is the logical split - it would allow these more challenging images to be compared instead of comparing them to easier-to-photograph perching birds.
POTY is not and should not be distorted to "incentivize people to take the photos we want to see. It should be choosing the best of what we have. There are other initiatives which encourage specific uploads.
Splitting out sports is a good idea if there are enough FPs to justify it.
It would make sense to advance 'the 3rd and maybe 4th place photos' of large categories - might be better than splitting.
The choice of categories would not influence my choice of nominations in any way.

@Tomer T, Aristeas, Famberhorst, Ikan Kekek, Moroder, Adam Cuerden, Milseburg, Llez, Iifar, Poco a poco, Agnes Monkelbaan, and IamMM: Charlesjsharp (talk) 13:36, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

In response to the main point here, I don't patrol discussion pages: this is not anyone else's fault. Discussions happen on discussion pages. You cannot expect a personal invitation. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 17:47, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes it is. It is not practicable to watch thousands of discussion pages in the hope of finding something interesting. Irregular contributors will go to the home page - where there should be an announcement and regulars will likely go to the FPC, QIC and VIC pages where there should also be an announcement. That's common sense. You yourself posted on the FPC discussion page because the organizers had failed to alert FP contributors. Apart from anything else, if someone is putting one of my images into a competition, it is a common courtesy to tell me. Charlesjsharp (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Irregular contributors will go to the home page - The complaint about was about POTY planning, not the announcement of POTY. Presumably nobody is looking at the main page for discussion pointers. It is not practicable to watch thousands of discussion pages in the hope of finding something interesting - What thousands? If you want to know what's going on behind the scenes at POTY, go to the POTY talk page. If you want to be in discussions about QIC, go to the QIC talk page. if you want to be in discussions about FPC, go to the FPC talk page. I cross-posted to FPC to alert FPC contributors not because the organizers had failed to alert FP contributors. Beyond these, maybe watch the VP in case someone posts there. So for POTY there are two, POTY talk and VP, and if you watch the FPC talk page, then that would've covered it too because of a cross-post. In addition, you can always volunteer to be on the POTY committee for next year. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 15:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

In the year we started using categories, the numbers advancing were based on category size, and it was intended - though never quite implimented into the templates - to have first and second place finishers for each category.

I'd say this is a good idea to restore. Even if the top ten is dominated by one category, at least all categories will be recognised. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:19, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify, we currently promote the top 30 overall and the top 2 in each category (see the Rules). The suggestion was that for larger categories, instead of splitting them, we just promote the third and possibly fourth place images in that category, if that makes sense. Legoktm (talk) 05:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I would just like to second the idea to promote also “the third and possibly fourth place images” for the larger categories. This is a very good idea and would certainly make the contest even fairer. Best, --Aristeas (talk) 11:51, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

2022 changes

Working area for the committee to implement changes; please keep discussion above. Legoktm (talk) 05:09, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Split Sports out of People Done
Split Birds taxonomically Done
Merge Maps into Works on paper Done

Two voting pages for the same picture

The file was moved from Buffalos at Hürmetçi Wetlands.jpg to Buffalos at Hürmetçi Wetlands, Kayseri, Türkiye.jpg after the voting began. Nardog (talk) 12:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

moved by User:Adem. please refrain from such disruptive edits in future.--RZuo (talk) 13:09, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I tried to revert but an error occured and moved to wrong title. Kadı Message 13:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@Krd, Could you revert it? I tried but abusefilter disallowed. Kadı Message 13:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for the chaos I caused :( -- Adem (talk) 14:08, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it. Please try to avoid renaming images unless absolutely necessary during POTY. And if it really must be renamed, coordinate with us beforehand. Legoktm (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Other than POTY, I'm not sure the rename was fully compliant with COM:FR anyways. Frostly (talk) 03:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

2022 Round 1 results

Hi, the round 1 results have been published: Commons:Picture of the Year/2022/R1/Results. Congrats to those advancing as finalists (highlighted in blue)! We are using a new vote counting system this year, so please feel free to double check that the results look correct.

Round 2 is scheduled to begin at 2023-05-04 00:00 UTC. I'll work on the necessary updates and creating the voting pages tomorrow. Legoktm (talk) 03:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, this year we had 118,086 votes cast by 2,407 voters. This is a modest increase from last year, which was 109,000 votes cast by 2,332 voters. Legoktm (talk) 03:44, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Round 2 description

Hi, current project page (Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2022) still states “In the first and current round”, also on translation pages. fyi Du Hugin Skulblaka (talk) 10:46, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Du Hugin Skulblaka: thanks, I had missed that. Fixed now! Legoktm (talk) 17:54, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Matric Result 2022 at hillcrest

like too see them Zezenkosi (talk) 17:10, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

2022 results!

Commons:Picture of the Year/2022/Results! And raw results. Congrats to the winners!! Please review the results, we'll send out proper announcements in the next few days. Legoktm (talk) 20:23, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

many thanks for your hard work in organising the contest. RZuo (talk) 20:32, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

My pleasure :)

Announcements have been sent to the commons-l and WikimediaAnnounce mailing lists and posted on Mastodon. I've also left notes on the winner and second-place uploaders' talk pages, and encourage people to also leave congratulations there. Legoktm (talk) 03:07, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

is the 2nd filename File:Etipoia Banna tribe kids.jpg misspelled? :/ RZuo (talk) 08:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Nice catch, renamed (ideally we'd catch those things in the time between posting results and announcements, but better late than never...). Legoktm (talk) 16:09, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

it's funny that it was not pointed out in the featured image vote. they normally scrutinise every single detail of a file.😂 RZuo (talk) 16:35, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

POTY 2023

When the categorisation for different types of images to be voted on was created, it was intended that this would result in prizes for all the different subtypes of images - "Best bird photo", etc. I'd suggest that for the next POTY, we actually set up the POTY template to allow that, as it'll add some variety to the winners, and allow us to celebrate a wider range of material. It would also go a long way to justifying the category breakdown. Adam Cuerden (talk) 00:46, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I like the idea; what do you mean by actually set up the POTY template to allow that? And would you use the Round 1 or Round 2 results for determining category winners? Legoktm (talk) 02:39, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

The POTY template would need extra functionality added to be able to state an image was the winner of a category.

As for which round, I'd say there's two options:

1. We use Round 1 voting to determine category winners, allowing us to combine categories for Round 2 if we have something we feel we should have a category winner for, but which is too small a grouping to want to have it for the whole process.

2. We use Round 2 voting, and either have a few small categories or leave out some. Probably the easiest, though given we have at least six months to plan, it feels like we can afford to do better than just doing the easiest. It might also be the fairest, though.

Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:43, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

R1 candidates posted

After more work than I expected, I fixed the poty admin tool to generate the list of R1 candidates (should be every featured picture from 2023). I manually removed two images from the list that had already been deleted, plus other fixes to file metadata.

The files in the "dummy" category need to be sorted, the easiest way to do so is with a user script, add the following to your common.js:

if (/^Commons:Picture_of_the_Year\/\d{4}\/Candidates$/.test(mw.config.get('wgPageName'))) {
	importScript('User:Rillke/gallery-sort.js');
}

The "integrity checks" noted that there are two duplicates, I haven't yet investigated if the script messed up or if they are listed on different galleries.

We should also discuss/propose category splits or combinations, here's statistics on the current size of each category. I did not implement the 2022 category changes for this year - do we want to adopt those for this and all future POTYs? Legoktm (talk) 17:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I've fixed the two duplicates. Legoktm (talk) 19:32, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

FP replacements?

What do we want to do about replaced images? I'm not sure what we've done in the past besides this POTY 2021 discussion where there was a new FP that was an exact rotation of an old one.

For example, in this successful nomination, we now have File:Grant Wood - American Gothic.jpeg as a newly featured picture (Jan 2023). A lower resolution version was a POTY 2012 finalist. I think there are one or two more cases this year, I can put together a full list if that's useful/necessary.

Legoktm (talk) 17:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

IMO, It is best to review the entire list once. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 17:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

This seems like a very uncommon scenario. In the case of American Gothic, they are two different photos of the same subject. As such I think we should treat them the same as two FPs of the same building from the same perspective at same time of day (i.e. not worry about it). If something was promoted a second time in error, that's a special case, of course. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 18:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm on board with that. For completeness, here are the other two removal cases this year, both higher quality images of art:

Legoktm (talk) 17:54, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Freely available artworks

Here's a thought. What is the point of including images of paintings etc. that someone has just uploaded from Google Art, a Museum or NASA etc? Seems completely pointless to me. I wouldn't even allow them at FPC. I believe POTY should be limited to images created by Commons users. Why not poll all FPC contributors (not just those who nominate images)? Charlesjsharp (talk) 21:50, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't remember where, but I know this has come up before and it was shot down. Personally, I prefer to only vote for images created by a Commons user. It's not the paintings and historical photos that I think change the shape of the competition, however, but the e.g. NASA photos, which we're comparing to the work of volunteers. But I don't think we're in the majority with that perspective, anyway. Regardless, this would be a major change that would require a lot of work to organize even if there were consensus. I'd like to suggest that you propose this for next year's contest, not the one that's set to start in just over a week. Another thought: Legoktm has suggested an additional contest this year along the lines of photo of the decade (Commons being 20 years old as of September). That's something that we could perhaps limit to Commons user-created images. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 22:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Commons is essentially a photo club. I don't know of any photo club where you can win with a photo downloaded off the Internet. But you are right that any change would have to start at FPC - and not this year. By the way Adam knows that I value his Wikipedia restoration contributions very highly (FP on enwiki), but I don't think they should be eligible for FPC on Commons. Charlesjsharp (talk) 09:14, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I disagree, I see Commons as a free media repository that aims to contain tons of freely licensed media, whether the person initially uploaded it to Flickr or YouTube first, seems immaterial to me, as long as they're participating in the creation and promotion of free content. I agree that such a dramatic change in scope for POTY would either need changes to FPC or some other, broader discussion.

That said, I also think we should have contests that recognize the work of just Commons users. There is some rough discussion here on what Rhododendrites was mentioning, I'd like to pick this topic up properly once POTY has actually kicked off. Legoktm (talk) 19:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Notifying image uploaders

Last year @Charlesjsharp said: ...Apart from anything else, if someone is putting one of my images into a competition, it is a common courtesy to tell me.. This resonated with me and I think it's a good way to also get uploaders excited about the contest and helping with publicity. If someone could take the lead on drafting a message (just create a wiki page, similar to our other MassMessage) to send to image uploaders, I will take care of the code/tech work to do the message delivery. Also, do we want to also include the FPC nominator in the notification? Legoktm (talk) 17:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Legoktm, I made a try at User:Emha/potymessage23.

If the user read their discussion page they already know about the promotion, so I wouldn't include details about the nomination.

You can use the text, change it or whatever you like.

Best regards, Emha (talk) 09:45, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@Emha: that's a great start, thank you! I've expanded it with a more explicit call to action and moved it to Commons:Picture of the Year/2023/Message/For uploaders. If that looks good to you we can mark it for translation shortly. Legoktm (talk) 04:42, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@Legoktm, thanks for making the text better and moving it - IMHO you can send it now to the contributors. Best, Emha (talk) 22:16, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Kicking off POTY 2023

Hi all, it's time to start working on POTY 2023! I'm going to create the initial set of pages now. Pinging @Firefly, @Rhododendrites and @AntiCompositeNumber to confirm you all want to continue serving on the POTY committee. I think we should try to recruit 1-2 more people to join the committee, especially people involved in the FPC process. @Frank Schulenburg has offered to help put out the word for us, we just need a short description on what committee members do and the time obligations.

There are also a good number of suggestions from last year we should implement, like formally recognizing category winners and notifying uploaders ahead of time so they can check their images. Legoktm (talk) 05:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Lego. I know I've said this before, but I'll throw it out again: those of us who participate at FPC, and thus have photos in contention for POTY might not be the best choice for some vague sort of COI reason. I mean, none of my FPs from this year have a real shot at POTY, but I'd hate for someone to think it was for some competitive reason that I organized a gallery a certain way or advocated for a certain schedule or whatever. That said, I appreciate we've had trouble recruiting a committee in years past, and am happy to serve if there are no objections. — Rhododendrites ^talk | 13:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@Legoktm: , I'd like offer to serve as a committee member of POTY now onwards. If, you could allowing me to join your team. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 17:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

@ZI Jony: that would be great! Please add yourself to committee page and I will add you to the Toolforge admin tool. Legoktm (talk) 17:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Legoktm, thank you for accepting my request. I've added myself as an committee member. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 17:37, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: certainly no objections here :) I understand your concerns but I think the best way to solve them is to have more FPC contributors participate, so it's easier for individuals to recuse without losing expertise. Legoktm (talk) 17:17, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I have no issue with Rhododendrites being on the committee. I fact having one member (and just one I think) who is in the competition is not a bad idea. If you are to have category winners the number of categories should reflect the number of competing entries. No merit in having a category winner with less than, say, 20 FPs. So smaller categories should be combined. Charlesjsharp (talk) 21:29, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree that having representation from at least one regular contributor to Featured Pictured Candidates is better than either managing this vote with zero participation from there, or with everyone on the POTY team from there. FPC oversees the designation and it is only natural to have its perspective in this team. As always in wiki, brief disclosure is helpful (a few words, maybe a sentence) but I see no significant conflict. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

My availability for the next month is likely to be limited, but I should be able to continue to help with the admin work required to run the contest. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

File:Monumento Natural O Frade e A Freira - Luciano Daniel (03) (cropped).jpg is missing

Could anyone help me about this one? ★ 10:58, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm, thanks for pointing that out. Looking into it. Legoktm (talk) 16:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

So it's not listed on Commons:Featured pictures/chronological/August 2023. Digging into the history, it seems this edit by @Adam Cuerden broke the page for the bot, so it wiped out a number of pictures that all appear to be missing. I'm going to fix it, check the history of other month pages and then regenerate the list of candidates. Legoktm (talk) 16:08, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@ArionStar: fixed! Legoktm (talk) 16:26, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

My apologies. I suppose I should remember how sensitive the bot can be. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2024 (UTC)